{"id":142215,"date":"2026-01-20T23:01:40","date_gmt":"2026-01-20T23:01:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/142215\/"},"modified":"2026-01-20T23:01:40","modified_gmt":"2026-01-20T23:01:40","slug":"northern-california-cities-contend-with-federal-lawsuit-over-on-hold-building-code","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/142215\/","title":{"rendered":"Northern California cities contend with federal lawsuit over on-hold building code"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Placeholderphoto credit: wikimedia\u00a0commons<\/p>\n

The U.S. Department of Justice is taking two Bay Area cities to court.<\/p>\n

The new lawsuit takes aim at local building codes in Petaluma, and in Morgan Hill in Santa Clara County.<\/p>\n

The two cities are being targeted by the Trump administration for adopting all-electric building standards, but, neither city is actually enforcing the rule.<\/p>\n

The newly-filed lawsuit by the federal Department of Justice seeks to overturn Petaluma and Morgan Hill’s bans on new natural gas infrastructure.<\/p>\n

The administration argues all-electric building codes, adopted in 2021 and 2019 respectively, violate federal energy directives and, “deny consumers reliable, resilient, and affordable energy, as well as the use of commonplace gas appliances.”<\/p>\n

News of the Department of Justice lawsuit has come as a shock, said Petaluma city attorney, Eric Danly.<\/p>\n

“It was actually the city manager got a inquiry from Reuters on [January 5th] before the city council meeting that night and that was the first we’d heard of it because we hadn’t been served yet,” Danly said.<\/p>\n

Both Petaluma and Morgan Hill originally pushed for all-electric appliance hook-ups in new construction as part of their climate action strategies. Petaluma introduced its rules in 2021, Morgan Hill in 2019.<\/p>\n

The bans on new natural gas infrastructure, including, in Petaluma, have been on pause since 2024, said Danly.<\/p>\n

“However, one may feel about the [US Court of Appeals] Ninth Circuit ruling in the Berkeley litigation, it became clear to us that we could no longer enforce those as as mandatory requirements following the ruling,” Danly said.<\/p>\n

The case Danly is referring to has come to be known as the Berkeley Ruling. Berkeley’s 2019 ban on new natural gas hook-ups was overturned by a federal appeals court in 2024; and the city attorneys for both Morgan Hill and Petaluma said neither has enforced the ban since.<\/p>\n

Morgan Hill city attorney Donald Larkin said the city has even approved new projects with natural gas infrastructure.<\/p>\n

D’Lynda Fischer is a former member of the Petaluma city council, and took a leading role in drafting a first-in-the-nation ban on new gas stations, and plotting the city’s path to carbon neutrality by 2030.<\/p>\n

“We are doing everything in our power to get to that point, because we know that that’s what it takes to become a more resilient community and what we need to be able to thrive,” Fischer said in response to the lawsuit. “So we’re on our way, regardless of what the federal government decides to do.”<\/p>\n

Danly said even without the natural gas prohibition, most new building projects in the city are eschewing gas hook-ups anyway.<\/p>\n

“It’s cheaper to just use one energy system in a building than two generally, and that’s been borne out just in practice,” Danly said.<\/p>\n

Both city attorneys have characterized the lawsuit as an unnecessary attempt to compel the cities to comply with laws they already follow.<\/p>\n

The Department of Justice did not respond to a request for comment.<\/p>\n

A hearing in the case is scheduled for late April.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"photo credit: wikimedia\u00a0commons The U.S. Department of Justice is taking two Bay Area cities to court. The new…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":142216,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[7,9,8],"class_list":{"0":"post-142215","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-california","8":"tag-california","9":"tag-california-headlines","10":"tag-california-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/142215","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=142215"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/142215\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/142216"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=142215"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=142215"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=142215"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}